Near Death Experience

I was coming back home late and quite sleepy. Just had tennis with some of my kakis. Was feeling quite sleepy, and then I went to surf the internet.

I turned on the computer, the main computer which my household uses. Its the second oldest computer in my house, and has been in service since 2003. Considering the amount of trash that we've built up on it, it's remarkable that it's working almost perfectly still. Of course it's not as well used as some of the computers at work, which run massive database queries every half an hour. We call them the comfort women of our department because they're always getting screwed.

2 years ago, my father bought an external hard drive. I don't really know if it's the traditional magnetic type or the flash type, which would make it an oversized thumb drive. Anyway he's always been telling me to back up the computer, back up his files, and I've always dithered. What if I didn't know how to use the hard drive?

Then today, it happened. I was just using the computer, and halfway through, the screen went blank. I tried to turn the computer back on, and somehow the monitor wouldn't receive the signal. Then I turned it off without shutting it down (which I know is bad for the computer but when there's no signal on the monitor there's no choice.)

After that, a few aborted attempts to turn the thing back on. The LED would just weakly light up, and nothing else happened.

Magically I was wide awake in an instant. I was like - shit. Something I told my old man I was going to do, and I didn't do it. I risked losing a shit load of data. (Actually I hadn't actually lost it. I would just send the computer down for servicing, and he would get it back with 95% probability.) The thought of causing him to lose all his work... He doesn't really know how to use a computer, and I'm always at his beck and call, there will be once or twice a week he would need something relatively simple to be done - some formatting with word, some cutting and pasting from a PDF file, some scanning. But for somebody who doesn't know how to use a computer, he's got an incredible shit load of data - how on earth did he manage to accumalate 4 gigs, none of it MP3s or videos? I was in full panic mode, trying to figure out how I was going to tell him - your stuff's gone because I kept on putting off saving the damn thing.

I knew the problem was with the power unit, so I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with the thing. Could I kick the computer? I would if I could, but that would almost certainly crash the hard disk. What if I could kick one part of the computer?

I opened the panel, and located what I thought was the power unit. Or I guessed that was it, because it was next to the fan. Then I started tapping away at it with my finger. Then I turned the computer back on.

BY GOLLY, A MIRACLE - THE DAMN THING WORKED!

So without a moment's hesitation, I backed up all the files onto his hard drive. And the funny thing is, it only took me about 1 hour. I procrastinated for 2 years over something that eventually took me 1 hour! Folks, this is why I will never amount to anything in life.